A Worcester resident is taking on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in $1 million lawsuit

Tuesday

Apr 3, 2018 at 3:15 PM

A Worcester resident is suing far-right media pundit and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for $1 million for the use of his likeness in an effort to discredit the Parkland shooting as a hoax.

Marcel Fontaine, a Worcester resident, filed the lawsuit in a Texas district court Monday. He named as defendants Jones; his website, InfoWars; Kit Daniels, a reporter for the website; and Free Speech Systems LLC.

The lawsuit alleges that on Feb. 14, the day of the Florida shooting, InfoWars posted a picture of Fontaine claiming he was the shooter, and that he dressed as a communist and supported ISIS. Authorities later identified Florida man Nikolas Cruz as the alleged shooter, but that didn’t stop hordes of far-right trolls from using Fontaine’s likeness and harassing him, according to the lawsuit.

In the picture used by InfoWars, Fontaine is wearing a red graphic t-shirt showing key figures in communist history getting drunk with the text “communist party” overlaid, an obvious play on words.

The image was plastered on the InfoWars website to perpetuate claims such as “shooter is a commie.”

“[Fontaine] is an ordinary young man with no connection to these events,” wrote Mark Bankston, Fontaine’s lawyer. “The articles were manifestly false and have caused him enormous injury and continuing personal harassment.”

Though Fontaine is only referenced in the lawsuit as a Massachusetts resident, Bill Ogden, a lawyer on the case, confirmed Fontaine is from Worcester. Fontaine himself deferred to his lawyers when reached for comment.

“We filed this lawsuit to hold (Jones) accountable for what he did,” said Ogden. “We’re bringing this case because an entity that considers themselves the leader of journalism, posted this photo of our client, and it was shared millions, if not hundreds of millions of times, claiming he was the shooter.”

Alex Jones could not be immediately reached for a response to the lawsuit. We will update the online version of this story if and when he responds or makes a public statement.

On Monday, the body text of the Feb. 14 InfoWars story was updated to include an editor’s note, calling it a “retraction, clarification and correction.”

“On this webpage on February 14, 2018, we showed a photograph of a young man that we had received and stated incorrectly that it was an alleged photo of the suspected shooter at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,” the note read.

It went on to say that InfoWars removed the picture after several hours.

“We regret that this error occured,” the note read.

But the lawsuit alleges those few hours were all it took for the image to spread across farright circles on social media “with astonishing speed,” reaching millions of people and soliciting ridicule and malicious threats. The InfoWars articles were also republished by other far-right websites verbatim.

The image was even picked up by politicians. Rep. Larry Pittman, a Republican state lawmaker in North Carolina, used the image to make the claim that school shooters are often “communist Democrats” carrying out a conspiracy to tighten gun control and take over the country, according to the lawsuit. The claim even reached some Twitter users in China.

“InfoWars’ story became a lie told round the world,” wrote Bankston.

InfoWars, according to the lawsuit, actively stokes distrust in the mainstream media, so some readers were not swayed that Cruz, not Fontaine, was responsible for the shooting. Instead, they continued to perpetuate the idea that Fontaine was an actor in the Parkland shooting, which InfoWars had called a “false flag” – Internet parlance for a conspiratorial hoax.

“Fontaine continues to suffer harassment and peril even from individuals aware of his identity as a Massachusetts resident, but who nevertheless remain convinced he was part of a horrifying conspiracy,” the lawyer wrote.

Fontaine is suing for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and conspiracy, among other charges.

Jones rose to popularity, from fringe figure to a near household name with a proclivity to bend the president’s ear, with his radio show and associated line on InfoWars products. The products, which include supplements, powders and vitamins, aim to provide a cure for government-led conspiracies to infect or otherwise injure his followers.

Jones has a long history of stoking outrageous conspiracy theories, including the idea the child victims of the Sandy Hook shooting were crisis actors, that 9/11 was an inside job, and the PizzaGate scandal, in which Jones was one of several voices that alleged Democratic party operatives ran a child sex dungeon out of a Washington, D.C. pizza place, according to the lawsuit. Jones called on his followers to investigate, and one did, opening fire in the pizza place in Dec. 2016.

The PizzaGate shooting, wrote Bankston, was the result of reckless lies on Jones’ part.

“Due to these events, it is no exaggeration to say that (Fontaine’s) life remains in genuine peril,” wrote Bankston.

The lawsuit is not the first that InfoWars has faced. Alex Jones was forced to issue a public apology to Chobani Yogurt last May after the company filed suit. Jones had originally claimed the yogurt company was harboring child-rapist refugees in its Idaho production plant.

In another lawsuit, a witness to the car attack that killed counter-protesting activist Heather Heyer during the Charlottesville, Va. Neo Nazi rally last August sued Jones and others for a conspiracy theory that he had in fact orchestrated the act. The lawsuit is still ongoing.